“Trixie…”
I opened my eye. One eye. I couldn’t open the other, although the throbbing ache behind it told me why. How many hits had I taken?
We were in darkness again. I couldn’t see Elias, and his voice was a haunted whisper. I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. I had nothing to say. I had no words that would make me feel alive again, make me feel whole, in control, or anything more than worthless. I sucked in a breath, and the exhale shuddered out of me.
“He’s gone.”
I nodded. I knew. Why couldn’t I remember what happened? Why did I feel like pulverised meat, and yet I didn’t remember fighting back?
“He likes the fight…” Elias swallowed and cleared his throat. “But he also likes to just take without resistance.”
I’d been knocked out. I’d been unconscious, unable to beg or plea or fight. My lip trembled and tears filled my open eye.
“I’m sorry, Trixie.”
I shook my head. I stared into the darkness, hoping it was in the right direction. The magnetism had left with my ability to protect myself. I wanted him to tell me.
“I can’t.” He knew what I wanted. I refused to acknowledge anything but a recount of what had happened to me. “Trixie, please.”
He was crying. His voice was weak and hoarse. He still shivered with fever—I could hear his teeth chattering and feel the burning chills radiating off him.
I still didn’t say anything. I had nothing to say.
“He raped you. He’s been here all night.” I hiccupped a sob as his words switched on the bruising sting in my core. “He beat you every time you woke up.”
I hurt. Everywhere. From head to toe and inside out, I hurt.
“He did this to my mother?” I asked, finally finding a question I needed an answer to.
“Yes.” Elias took another sick breath, followed by a hacking cough that made him growl in pain. “I didn’t know until last night. I would have done more to protect you. I should have done more. You shouldn’t be here.”
“We’re going to get out,” I lied. I knew we were doomed. I knew Elias was close. I knew he was going to leave me, and we had to prepare to leave each other before it happened. “Tell me what he told you.”
“He told me you and I should be siblings. He said if your mother had given birth to a boy, she would have had no choice but to marry him. You look so much like her, Trixie. When he looks at you, he sees her, and he can’t not have her.”
“You didn’t know any of this?”
“I knew my father was obsessed with you. I fed the fantasy. I knew he’d been with your mother—unfortunately, she makes up another lesson.”
“Another Eli…”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s education you could do without.”
“Not now.”
He sighed. “No. Not now.”
“Teach me,” I said, groaning as I rolled onto my stomach and got to my knees.
I could breathe. I could move. The chain was gone.
“Elias…”
“He was bargaining on you not being able to move. Or this is part of this plan.” He shivered. “I don’t know anymore. I thought we were the good guys.”
“We are.” Ignoring the pain—just pain, I couldn’t even decide where it was anymore—I crawled across the cell to him. “We are the good guys. We have to get out of here and find out who else fights with us. We can’t let him win.”
“It’s poisoned.”
“What?”
“My blood. Eventually I’ll die. It might take a day, it might take a week, but I can’t fight the only thing that keeps me alive.”
“He’s going to make you better. He promised.”
“You think-” He stopped to cough, raising his hand lazily to cover his mouth. “You think you can take his word?”
“What can I do?”
Elias shrugged. I cupped his face in my hands and pressed my lips to his. The kiss was slow and languid, until something sparked between us, and he was soon forcing his tongue past my lips and into my mouth, gripping my waist to drag me onto his lap.
Dirty fucking harlot.
I’ve ruined you for him.
He’ll never want you again.
I stopped, halting my very existence, until Elias loosened his hold and pulled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“This.” I sniffed and swiped at a tear. “This is wrong.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Ashford…”
I slid off him, smiling in sad appreciation when he let me. My body seized up, and excruciation overwhelmed more with every inch I put between us, but I had to. I had to get away from him, while the reminder of his father lived inside me.
“Sleep, Trixie. Your body will heal with sleep.”
“We need to get out.”
A hint of fight returned and I got to my feet, gripping the wall for support as I rounded the cell and grabbed the top of the chain holding Elias in place. It was embedded to the wall and I felt the concrete used to hold it between the stones. I pulled. I pulled so hard my ribs sang out a minor tune of agony. I pulled so hard my stomach roared with heat and reminded me of the internal bruising. I pulled so hard my head pounded an unrelenting rhythm that hinted at another blackout.
“We’ll get it loose,” he said. “We’ll keep trying.”
I felt cold fingers slide up my bare leg, until they curled around my wrist and tugged, begging for attention. When I looked down at Elias, the magnetism returned and pleaded with me to do something.
I did all I could do.
I curled up on the floor between his legs, and cried into his chest until we both fell asleep.
“Oh, isn’t this pretty?”
That voice. It stirred demons that had been forced into hibernation while my body failed me. My father had returned, and I kept my hold on my Ashford. She felt lighter, but heavier with tragedy. She felt cold with disassociation, but hot with knowledge of a reality she didn’t want. She was every oxymoron rolled into one, and I would protect them all.
I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t. I’d felt my brain begin to fuzz and I was acutely aware of the confusion. I felt the haze pulse in my mind, calling for me to step into it and accept my fate. I don’t know how long we’d been here, but I knew the outlook wasn’t good. I knew whatever he’d thrown over my leg the night he took me had slowed down the onset of sepsis, but I knew it was there. The poison was in my blood and I’d begun feeling it lick at my organs, preparing them for failure. All I could do was sit and hold Trixie, and take deep breaths knowing each one brought me closer to death.
“Please, let her sleep.” I looked at my father as he struck a match and lit the torch next to the door. He had a black box tucked under his arm and the sight of it filled me with dread. I didn’t know how much more torture I could watch. “You can’t be that heartless.” I coughed and sucked in a quick breath. “You got what you wanted from her. She isn’t her mother. I know it and I know you felt it when you fucked her.”
I hated the words. In that moment, I hated that I could talk. I wanted to bleach my mind to rid me of the images of my father ramming into my Ashford. I never wanted to acknowledge what he’d done again, but I had to get through to him before it was all over for me.
“She’s not her mother, but she’s every inch as satisfying.” I squeezed my eyes shut, tightening my hold on Trixie. I wouldn’t let him take her again.
Ambrose crossed the room and drove his foot straight into Trixie’s waist. She jolted awake with a scream and curled up into me. I winced and held my breath, but kept the hiss of agony contained.
“Wakey wakey, princess.” Ambrose smacked her cheek and she gasped, letting the tears fall freely before she’d woken up enough to be able to stop them. “You’ve got three seconds to get off him, or I’ll walk back out with this medicine. One…”
Trixie was gone. She climbed off me quicker than I could suck in anoth
er breath, and the pain increased ten-fold when my soul realised she’d left me. She knelt next to me and looked at Ambrose. Her once cosmic eyes now looked like withered summer flowers, wilted beneath my father’s evil.
“Stay right there, harlot. That position suits you.” He winked. I snarled. I wanted to kill him. I allowed every torture method I’d ever learnt skitter through my mind like a montage. “If you move, I stop the treatment.” He knelt on the ground between my legs. Trixie gasped, anxiety tearing through her when she realised how close he was. I wasn’t afraid. I’d go through endless pain if it meant I’d be strong again. “Now, we’re going to test out a variety, see what works.”
“Intravenous drugs are the only option,” Trixie said. “He’s too far gone for your experimentation.”
“You think so?” Ambrose pulled out a bag of clear liquid and some tubing. “In that case-” He placed it on the ground next to him. “We’ll go right back to the beginning.”
“No.” Trixie bowed her head. Once again I was silenced by helplessness. I was tired. So tired… “I’ll stop. I won’t say another word, just please help him.”
“I’m going to keep him alive for as long as I need you.”
Bastard. I wanted to throw my hand out, dig it into his chest and pull his fucking heart out for saying the one thing to make Trixie submit. He was a disgrace to everything we stood for.
Trixie keened quietly next to me as Ambrose pulled jar after jar out of his box and set them out between my legs.
“Blood-letting was thought to be a successful way of curing infection. Take out the poisonous blood.” He pulled out one leech, then another, and another, squeezing them together between his fingers. I didn’t move when he placed them around the sticky bullet wound and the fuckers began to suck.
“It’s okay,” I said, registering the shock on my wife’s face as she watched the leeches drink my blood. “It doesn’t hurt. You know I like blood.”
“Ah, so she knows about your sick fetish.” Ambrose laughed.
I grimaced and forced my expression to return to blankness. It did fucking hurt. I hated this pitiful existence. I needed to remain strong and nurse the carrier of my internal beast back to health.
“Now, the Romans…” Ambrose reached for another jar and unscrewed the lid. The fume exploded like a mushroom cloud and I retched at the smell of alcohol and vinegar. Shit. “They had their own methods of cleaning wounds.”
Tilting his wrist, he tipped the liquid into the wound. I screamed. My lungs seized up as I bled them dry with my cries. Ambrose tipped again. And again. And again. I don’t know how many times he subjected me to the cleansing burn, but I felt the shock moving in.
“Enough?”
“Enough!” I spluttered, swiping at the tears streaming from my eyes. “Enough.”
“Trixie.” Ambrose motioned for her to move closer. She obeyed immediately, shuffling closer to him and keeping her head bowed, eyes on me. “Give me your word and I will start administering treatment.”
“My word for what?”
“You have to ask? You’d subject my son to more pain because you’re curious?”
“I give you my word.”
I gasped. “Ashford!”
“He’ll save you,” she said, resting her hand on my burning leg. I couldn’t even feel her touch. It may have been the last time she’d touch me, and I couldn’t feel it. “You’re going to be okay.”
I shook my head, ready to fight, but I was powerless, trembling with agony I could no longer feel, although it made me numb, as Ambrose pulled at the tubing, grabbed my wrist to stab my hand with something that should have been sharp but felt like a whisper. When he stood up, extending the tubes to hang the bag from somewhere above me, I sighed. The warm, cold—whatever it was—liquid seeped slowly into my hand and I focussed on its journey around my body. While the medicine sang in my blood, giving me the first sense of cleansed existence in however long, it felt like lead in my bones and steel in my muscles. I felt like I was slowly turning to concrete, the inside coming to life, as the outside hardened and reinforced itself to lock me inside my own body.
“Trixie…” My voice wasn’t mine. It was slurred and incoherent, and my eyes began to close.
“I’ll be back. I’ll never leave you.”
Her voice took me to a dreamland where we collided with a nightmare.
“Are you ready to meet the underground?”
“I’m ready to pay for my husband’s treatment.”
“How much are you prepared to pay, Ashford?”
Don’t call her that! Only I can call her that!
Trixie’s love curled around me like silk, transporting me to a world where the past meant nothing and the future meant everything. My father’s hatred stung me with rejection, plummeted me into a raging inferno and laughed at me for failing the one thing I’d been raised to do.
Fight.
“Your son’s life is invaluable. I have no choice but to obey you. And there will be no escape for you when you’re made to pay for your sins.”
Ambrose laughed. “Oh, I hope not.” A sharp smack echoed around the cell and I winced inside. I couldn’t move the outside. Reality was slipping. My life was slipping. Sleep was moving in and I had no power against the eternal slumber it promised. “Time to make your payment, harlot.”
I saw the light. I felt the pull. I gave up the fight when I heard the door of the cell open, and my wife whispered something about returning, or not returning, not saying goodbye…no, she said goodbye.
I died.
I couldn’t see. Ambrose had blinded me with a black sack over my head, cuffed my wrists behind my back, and the same strong body that had stolen me from Ashford House carried me out of my cell and to wherever Ambrose had ordered I’d be taken. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what he was going to demand I do, in order to pay for Elias’ treatment. I was thrown in the back of the van. It smelt like rotten meat and death. I knew without a doubt it was a trafficker’s van. Where were they taking me? I panicked and thrashed on the floor of the van. If they smuggled me out of the city, I’d never be able to get back in and save him. The shutter rattled as someone pulled it down and silence descended before the roar of an engine became my only company.
“Ashford…” Someone was flicking my face with droplets of water and I shook my head. “Ashford…”
I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling of the van. We’d stopped, and three men loomed over me. I recognised every pair of eyes, faces of their owners covered by black balaclavas.
“Welcome home,” the one who had ordered my compliance said. I shook my head.
“Are you ready to play?” the second muttered, his voice thick with pride in himself, and disdain for me.
“You’re in for an exciting night,” the third said, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard with forbidden lust.
“Please,” I begged, getting to my feet and backing up until my back hit the side of the van.
The cold metal stabbed my wounds and I cried out, launching myself into a pair of waiting arms. All three of them laughed, and it made the twinge of betrayal so much worse to know I knew these people—Elias knew these people and was the reason for their safety—and they’d become traitors.
Ambrose’s assistant, the bigger of the two monsters whose names I refused to acknowledge, stepped forward while the other one held my arms until they bruised. Ambrose watched on with evil, hungry eyes as they dressed me.
“We’ll take them off later, princess, don’t worry. You only need to wear the costume during show time.”
“Now, do you want to know which role you’ve been cast in?”
I nodded. I just wanted to get this over with.
“We’re going to walk you through each of your husband’s failed tasks. Now, firstly…he saved a woman once—his secretary’s assistant. Do you know what happened to her?”
I shook my head.
“No, of course
you don’t. Elias was too wrapped up in your tight little cunt to realise she’d been discharged from Majors and hadn’t been assigned transportation home. She died, Ashford. They were waiting, and they got her.”
I gasped and tried to back away. I tried to turn and run, but three huge bodies surrounded me and promised a fate worse than death if I didn’t obey.
“Do you think you’ll make it?” Ambrose asked as the others snickered. “Do you think you can walk two hundred metres to the scene where she died?”
“Please, don’t.”
“She should have been taken home in a car. She should have made it back to her daughter. She should have been protected like you were. Do you deserve it more than she did?”
“No, I don’t. I didn’t ask for protection.”
“Ah.” Number Two laughed and glared at me. “But your whore of a mother and prick of a father ensured you carried a silver spoon in your mouth. So you see, this is for both you and Elias. Unfortunately, he’s a little tied up, and might not make it. You see my point, Ashford…you need to learn about the world you live in.”
One hand seized hold of my throat and he shoved me to the inside wall of the van, lifting me off my feet so Number Three could crouch in front of me and complete my outfit of whore-of-the-night.
“Now. Let’s see if you can make it.”
Ambrose shoved me out of the back of the van. My ass hit the floor and the memories of the past few days slammed into me. Elias. He was dying. He was dying! And now they were banishing me to the underground, because they knew they’d lose me if I lost him.
They were playing with our lives, and I had no idea if we would survive. Would I die first, while Elias healed and regained his strength? Or would he die first while I fought a battle I would never win?
I got to my feet and smoothed my clothes down. Bruises sang, muscles screamed and my soul tried to force me to give up. What was the point? This city was too far gone. We didn’t stand a chance.
“Now, harlot,” a rough growl crawled out and I jumped, taking the first step towards my new destiny.
The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2) Page 33
